George Benson
Musician
George Benson has the rare distinction of being in the pop consciousness while remaining in the pantheon of jazz greats. The iconic guitarist/vocalist/songwriter fearlessly follows his muse—the melody—across genres, eras, and perceived expectations with elegance and imagination. Benson embodies jazz’s improvisatory spirit, restlessly shapeshifting and searching while retaining his own elegant essence: his honeyed vocals, guitar lines that veer from lyrical to dazzling, and his penchant for slick grooves from blazing be-bop to sultry neo-soul.
“When I grab my instrument, I ask myself this question: How come no one has ever explored this? I am constantly putting new tools in my arsenal, and I’ve also invented a few things along the way,” the pop-jazz-R&B legend says with a good-natured laugh.
Over six decades, 36 studio albums, and 8 live albums, the 10-time Grammy-winner has summited the pop, R&B, soul, and jazz charts. His 1976, three-time Grammy-winning album, Breezin’, boasting the pop-jazz vocal smash “This Masquerade,” topped the jazz, pop, and R&B charts and remains one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time—it has since been certified 3x platinum. Benson’s 1980 smash, “Give Me The Night,” produced by Quincy Jones and written by Rod Temperton (Michael Jackson), rocketed to the top of the soul single charts. In 2009, Benson was awarded the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship— the highest honor that our nation bestows on jazz artists. In addition, Benson has rightly earned a Hollywood Walk of Fame Star and an honorary doctorate degree from Berklee School of Music.
In 2018, Benson collaborated with subversive art-pop band, Gorillaz, featuring Blur’s Damon Albarn and visual artist Jamie Hewlett, to co-write and perform on the track “Humility,” which has amassed over 100 million YouTube views and counting. In 2021, DJ Steve Aoki remixed Benson’s hit “Give Me The Night” with a rugged house beat introducing the irresistible R&B-pop gem to a whole new audience.
Benson remains a vital force in modern music. His current albums have earned prime features and rave reviews in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, American Songwriter, Forbes, and Newsweek. He recently co-wrote, performed the title track, and appeared in the video for funk pioneer Bootsy Collins Power Of The One. In 2020, he was inducted into jazz bible DownBeat Magazine’s “Hall Of Fame.” The following year he was inducted by music legend Quincy Jones into New Jersey’s Hall Of Fame—an honor from which he received a personal congratulatory note from President Obama.
His live-album oeuvre speaks to his vitality as a performing artist—Benson walks that delicate balance between being a consummate performer and an adventurous instrumentalist. He remains an annual must-see artist who regularly packs and often sells out such hallowed venues as The Hollywood Bowl, Royal Albert Hall, Hampton Court Palace, and Sydney Opera House. Benson is also a marquee artist at many U.S. Jazz and international festivals, including Montreux Jazz Fest.
“When I play live, I always keep in mind that melodies stay in people’s psyches. I can go to the moon with my improvisations, but I always remind them I’m playing a song like, ‘This Masquerade,’” Benson explains. “I have freedom in my mind—I’m not afraid of trying new things—but I also want to be faithful to the music and stories that I’m grateful mean so much to people.”
The Pittsburgh, Hill District-born Benson came up in a multicultural neighborhood that reflected a vibrant array of musical, cultural, and artistic perspectives. Blues, jazz, R&B, and great romantic movie themes permeated his house with the radio and his mother’s singing. “All that music became a part of me, and I’ve never forgotten where I come from,” Benson maintains.
When he was just 7, his mother met his stepfather, and the trio moved into a small motel. It was the first time Benson had electricity, and he will never forget his stepfather—an electric guitar obsessive and fanatic for the father of electric jazz guitar, Charlie Christian—retrieving his guitar from the pawnshop and plugging in and playing note-for-note Charlie Christian solos. “I thought it was pure magic that the music went from one side of the room from a box to another side of the room. I felt that music just zip through my body,” Benson recalls.
Benson would go onto to soak in the elegant innovations of Charlie Parker (particularly his Charlie Parker with Strings albums), Nate “King” Cole, Charlie Christian’s work with Benny Goodman, and British jazz pianist George Shearing, but it would take time before he mustered up the courage tackle that music in seriousness. Up until then, he had become an accomplished blues, pop, R&B, and soul vocalist and guitarist performing the music of Ray Charles, B.B. King, and Bobby “Blue” Bland around clubs in Pittsburgh.
One fateful day, Buddy Montgomery, the legendary vibraphonist and pianist and younger sibling of jazz guitar titan Wes Montgomery, was playing one of the upscale jazz clubs, and a young Benson was performing across the street at a gritty blues and R&B club. At the time, Benson was a teen, but was also a seasoned vet who had been performing since he was 7 years old, starting off dancing, singing, and playing ukulele. “Buddy came into my club—I guess because the drinks were cheaper,” he recalls with a hearty chuckle. “He said to me ‘hey man, did you ever think about playing jazz?’ I always felt that I didn’t have the chops, and I was shunned when I went to jam sessions because I didn’t know the harmonic language.”
Two years later, at just 19, Benson was out with renowned soul-jazz organist Jack McDuff playing at the beloved San Francisco Jazz Workshop when he ran into Montgomery again. “He said ‘haven’t I seen you before? I knew you could do it!.’ I had fallen in love with jazz,” Benson remembers. Poetically, Benson would go on to be viewed in the public eye as the successor to Montgomery’s brother, Wes Montgomery, a giant in jazz with a passion for the lyrical and the virtuosic who died too soon at just 45 in 1968.
The Wes Montgomery comparison is one Benson is proud of—his 1964 debut was released as The New Boss Guitar in tribute to Montgomery’s beloved record Boss Guitar. However, Benson would go on to become an innovator with his own distinct approach to the guitar brimming with formidable chops, jeweled melodies, and harmonic sophistication.
Benson’s early career gained prime visibility through his association with legendary producer and A&R person John Hammond Sr. (Benny Goodman, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Aretha Franklin, among others). Hammond produced two of Benson’s CBS albums. Next, Benson signed to Creed Taylor’s jazz label, CTI Records. Taylor had commercial instincts and a musician’s heart. He is the producer often credited as starting America’s 1960s bossa nova craze, and Benson’s output on the CITI label was successful and wildly adventurous. His funky 1974 release, Bad Benson, climbed to the top spot in the Billboard jazz chart, and during this time he expanded his repertoire through recording songs by the Beatles and Jefferson Airplane, while also working with jazz giants such as Freddie Hubbard and Stanley Turrentine.
His public platform, however, came with Breezin’ produced by Tommy LiPuma. The album became the household jazz album of the late 1970s and beyond. It soared up to the charts on the wings of the hit “This Masquerade” which featured the guitarist singing a tender lead vocal and scatting along with his solo break. Story goes, the Leon Russell soul-pop gem wasn’t intended to be on the album, and was recorded only once and almost as an aside during the sessions as he and LiPuma debated the bold move of putting a vocal on an instrumental album. The gamble worked, and launched Benson into the pop and modern music firmament, bridging his jazz career with his pure love of music in all of its forms.
Benson had further success with the breakthrough pop album Give Me The Night, produced by Quincy Jones, and boasting the monster Rod Temperton hit “Give Me The Night.” The song launched Benson into the pop and R&B Top 10 charts, and opened the door for many other hit vocal singles, including "Love All the Hurt Away," "Turn Your Love Around," "Inside Love," "Lady Love Me," "20/20," "Shiver," and "Kisses in the Moonlight." Along the way, he earned three other platinum LPs and two gold albums. Benson’s time with Quincy Jones encouraged him to explore rediscover his love for singing, and his passion vocalists such as Nat Cole, Ray Charles and Donny Hathaway.
Today, Benson remains a hard-bitten jazz musician with a sweet tooth for ear candy, and a joyful musical wanderlust always searching for that perfect melody or an undeniable groove. Decades in, he is still in demand as an artist, performer, and collaborator—people remain hungry for that elusive Benson sound. Assessing a career that spans genres and eras, Benson remains honest about his longevity. He says: “Nobody can stay one way for 30 years. I’ve always tried to let my experience show itself. You learn, you change.”